Several sources in Philadelphia are reporting today that a 22-year-old named David Sale was beaten to death outside of Citizen’s Bank Park last night, just as the Phillies were wrapping up a 14-6 victory over the Cardinals. Sale was apparently a member of a bachelor party that got in some sort of altercation inside of McFadden’s, the bar attached to the stadium.

Members of the bachelor party and another group characterized as a “bar tour” (pub crawl?) were kicked out of the bar around 7:00 p.m. for fighting, but everything turned much uglier once it got outside. And now, Philly police are on the cusp of arresting multiple people in connection with the killing, which they say was committed without any weapons other than fists and feet.

Police said the group got into an altercation with other patrons at the pub at around 7 p.m., as the Phillies game was in late innings. According to police, McFadden’s employees ousted the two groups from the bar and promptly notified both police and Phillies security of the incident.

But the fight continued shortly after in a nearby parking lot, said Police Lt. Frank Vanore.

By the time police reached the scene, Sale was on the ground and unresponsive. He had been hit repeatedly about the head with fists and feet, Vanore said. There are no signs any weapons were used in the attack.

As THE 700 LEVEL points out, this is the sort of thing that could happen anywhere and we shouldn’t pile on Philadelphia or paint Phillies games as some sort of dangerous excursion. We’ve seen senseless deaths happen at Dodger Stadium, and even outside of Wrigley Field in the last few years.

That doesn’t make it any less tragic, of course. Without knowing what exactly happened, one wonders why police and/or security weren’t on hand quicker to keep things from getting that out of hand, and why, if 60 people were part of the two groups, did none of them try and prevent a guy from being beaten to death. I suppose we’ll just have to wait for further info.

This entry was posted
on Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Police Blotter , Baseball .
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